


The Nook in the Roof

by CrackingLamb



Series: One Shot Wonders, A Collection of Junkyard Dogs Stories [9]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Family Fluff, Just a short little thing, Mentions of Synth Shaun, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 03:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14662668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrackingLamb/pseuds/CrackingLamb
Summary: Sometimes you just need a space to get away from it all.





	The Nook in the Roof

Nora heard the roof protest, and knew Hancock was up there again. She had no idea why he liked being up there, unless he missed being in the State House, where he had a balcony. She went out into the backyard, skirting around the firepit he’d built for her, and the hot water tank he’d built for her, until she came to the rickety ladder _she’d_ built when she was first working on Sanctuary Hills. She clambered up carefully – each rung with slick with ice.

It was February, and a thin crust of snow covered everything. The snow didn’t stick well to the ladder since he was up and down it all the damned time, so the snow turned first to slush, and then to ice as the temperature dropped. She remembered past winters, before the war, when everything glistened and glowed from the snow, when feet upon feet of it dropped out of the sky to blanket everything in white. The weather patterns had changed with the fallout. There was still snow, but there wasn’t much. Shaun couldn’t even build a snowman.

She smiled at that thought. Shaun hadn’t even known what snow was when they’d brought him home. He’d lived his whole life – however much of it there had been – in the Institute. He was a typical ten year old boy now, but at first he had just been a programmed facsimile of human behavior. A prototype synth. She always felt a pang of regret, tinged with fury, when she thought of her natural son, of what he had done and what he had been planning. Even though she now got to reap the reward of trying anew with his copy. Director, Father…son. There was no place for forgiveness in the Commonwealth. Either for him, or for herself. Of course, she was the only one blaming herself. Hancock understood her grief, but held none of his own.

“Your chems just kick in?” the man himself drawled as she stood poised at the top of the ladder, and she realized she’d been staring into space. The cold had seeped through her gloves already and she shivered.

“Just woolgathering,” she replied.

“Well, get up here and I’ll show you what I’ve made for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah, what’d you think I was doing, sneaking chems without you?”

“The thought crossed my mind,” she teased. She heard his answering chuckle and knew she wasn’t far off. He tried hard not to be high in front of Shaun, but it was not an easy transition for him, and she had no expectations that he was going to suddenly change and become father of the year overnight. In fact, she was grateful that he was making the attempt at all.

She climbed up onto the roof and carefully placed her feet in his footsteps, trusting that Hancock would find a path across the threadbare sheets of roofing metal and spars without falling through. She reached his side and he pulled her into his warmth. Ghouls were always warm and he was no exception regardless of how he'd turned. He was in his shirtsleeves, the ruffles blowing around restlessly in the light breeze. She saw his frockcoat draped over an exposed strut from the roof. But he radiated heat like a furnace and she willingly basked in it, his arms around her waist.

“Come see,” he whispered in her ear.

“I already like what I see.”

“No seduction on the roof, Sunshine. We’d have a hell of a time explaining that one to Shaun.”

“Hmm, pity.” He eyed her askance, slightly chiding, but joking all the same.

“You are such a strange bird, love,” he murmured. “You do know most people run screaming from ghouls, right?”

“Most people are stupid.”

“Guess I lucked out then, huh?”

“I think we both did.” This was the way she had sustained herself after the hell that had been destroying the Institute. She knew in her heart that his self-deprecating façade was just that, but she also hoped that she was beginning to get through to him that he was the best person she’d met since leaving the Vault. No matter what his past had been, his future was bright as long as they were together. And so was hers.

“C’mon, I’ve worked hard on this.” He tugged her hand and drew her to a hollow in the roof. Between the naked beams and rusting out shingles, there was a space he’d lined with fresh planks of wood and thin wire supports to keep it off the underlying ceiling. When she’d first begun rebuilding Sanctuary Hills, she knew she’d never get the peaked roofs fixed again, but she was able to lay flat pieces of sheet metal inside the structures, creating a new roof over her settlers’ heads. The old peaks were mostly just decoration now. Hancock seemed to have taken the space left over and made a cozy little spot where they could curl up and see the sky. Light leaked through the rivet holes along the edges, casting a soft glow up from the house below. But he’d tucked a lantern in the corner of the hidey hole he’d made, and there was enough light for her to see what he’d done. On top of the planks he’d laid for a floor, there were blankets and pillows, scavenged from all sorts of places. There was a small end table where he’d put the lantern, with a couple books that were in reasonably good shape all things considered. Folded neatly in a corner was a tarp that would cover the whole thing when it rained or snowed. It was a private space, just for them to escape from their duties and be alone – a task just as hard now as it had been before they blew up the Institute just over two months ago. Made harder still by the demands of parenthood.

“Oh, John,” she sighed, and was pleased to see the satisfaction on his face. He loved to build things. He and Shaun had gotten into a routine together of scrapping junk and cobbling together all manner of things. It had formed the first bond between the man she’d chosen to be her partner and the replacement son she had rescued from certain death. They were an odd trio, pre-war lawyer, post-war ghoul and synthetic child. But they were family, just the same.

 _Does that make you my new father?_ Shaun had asked that day.

 _If you want it to_ , Hancock had replied.

She settled down into the nest of blankets and he sprawled behind her, giving her something to lean against. He called himself scrawny, and Brahmin jerky and not worth much of anything, but she didn’t believe it. He was her rock, her foundation. Steadfast, unmovable and devoted. She couldn’t picture life without him in it.

“I love you, you know that?”

He grinned, showing off his even white teeth that had somehow made it through his transformation into a ghoul. “Is it because I’m clever?”

“No…well, yes. But I love you because you are you.” She leaned into him, letting his heat wash over her like the best blanket in the world and sighed with contentment. She tipped her head up to look at the sky through the opening between the struts. “The stars are so bright tonight.”

“They’re beautiful,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at her. He always looked at her. She joined their hands together and wrapped herself up in his love and strength.

“Thank you, baby,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine Hancock is quite handy, and loves to surprise Nora with the things he can build just as much as he loves to ambush her for sexy times (which he does a lot). This is just a little scene that popped into my head while I was trying to write a totally different one shot. But I like it. It takes place after the events of Junkyard Dogs, obviously.
> 
> Also, the flat roofing panels in the game do actually fit in the ceilings of the houses in Sanctuary, and I use them to fix all the houses up so they don’t get rained in all the damned time, and I don’t have to build new structures for my settlers from scratch. Screw that noise.


End file.
